This invention relates to a machine for sorting graphic and/or printing products.
Devices and machines forming bundles of newspapers, magazines, books or signatures of a predetermined number so that the bundles can then be dispatched for distribution are known in the printing industry. However, devices of this kind have significant limits with respect to the manual handling of the said products and they are not capable of effecting automatic sorting of the products in question.
The above considerations apply firstly in the phase consisting of forming bundles of graphic and/or printing products consisting of products of different types and adapted to be delivered to the distributor.
However, the inherent limits of the devices and machines of the known type are revealed above all with respect to the automatic handling of what are referred to as "returns" sent back to the distributor or directly to the publisher.
These returns are simply the copies of newspapers, magazines, books, etc. which have not been sold and are returned by the vendor to the distributor or to the publisher. These copies must be counted, principally to ascertain and verify the actual number sold and distributed by the said vendor. Secondly, it is useful to ascertain this number in order to determine the appropriate number of copies to send subsequently to the distributor and/or the vendor for attempted sale. The operational disadvantages of the machines of the known type consist above all of the difficulty in handling graphic and/or printing products of different sizes with respect to both section and height and of the difficulty in identifying some of these products which are different from one another, although at first sight are completely alike.
The object of this invention is to produce a machine which is capable of sorting graphic and/or printing products which may or may not be different, and of forming groups of products of a predetermined number, and of identifying and counting these products which may or may not be different.
Another object is to produce a machine of the type just mentioned with which both automatic and semi-automatic feeding devices for products of this kind can be associated.